Government Corruption News Articles

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Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

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The US Keeps Pouring Money Into Nuclear Weapons

2024-08-07, Jacobin

https://jacobin.com/2024/08/nuclear-weapons-budget-contractors-icbms

The Pentagon is in the midst of a massive $2 trillion, multiyear plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. A large chunk of that funding will go to major nuclear weapons contractors like Bechtel, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. And they will do everything in their power to keep that money flowing. This January, a review of the Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program under the Nunn-McCurdy Act ... found that the missile, the crown jewel of the nuclear overhaul plan involving 450 missile-holding silos spread across five states, is already 81 percent over its original budget. It is now estimated that it will cost a total of nearly $141 billion to develop and purchase, a figure only likely to rise in the future. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' "Doomsday Clock" – an estimate of how close the world may be at any moment to a nuclear conflict – is now set at ninety seconds to midnight, the closest it's been since that tracker was first created in 1947. Considering the rising tide of nuclear escalation globally, is it really the right time for this country to invest a fortune of taxpayer dollars in a new generation of devastating "use them or lose them" weapons? The American public has long said no, according to a 2020 poll by the University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation, which showed that 61 percent of us actually support phasing out ICBM systems like the Sentinel.

Note: Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

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This African Country Kicked Out The U.S. Military. Did The Pentagon Lie About It?

2024-07-24, The Intercept

https://theintercept.com/2024/07/24/niger-us-military-troops/

For more than a decade, the U.S. had a significant counterterrorism partnership with Niger, with nearly 1,000 American troops stationed at two airbases: one near the capital in the populated south of the country, and another, on the southern fringe of the Sahara Desert. That partnership came to a sudden end this past March 16, when a spokesperson for the country's ruling junta took to national television to announce that the government was unceremoniously kicking the U.S. military out. "The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and interests of its people, revokes, with immediate effect, the agreement concerning the status of United States military personnel and civilian Defense Department employees," Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane said. "The United States is proud of the past security cooperation between U.S. forces and Nigerien forces, a partnership which effectively contributed to stability in Niger and the region," a State Department official [said]. But statistics supplied by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies ... show that terrorist violence in West Africa spiked while that partnership was in effect. Fatalities from attacks by militant Islamist groups in the Sahel, for example, have jumped more than 5,200 percent since 2016. As violence has spiraled, at least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror.

Note: Learn more about how war is a tool for hidden agendas in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. Since 2008, the US military has been connected to coups in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Gambia, Chad, and Guinea. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

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Mexican cartels boast of increased lethal firepower, including some weapons from the U.S.

2024-06-29, USA Today

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/06/29/mexican-cartels...

"El Flaco" ... works as a mercenary, he said, and had come to discuss a closely guarded secret of Mexico's most powerful cartels: The FGM 148 Javelin infrared-guided, missile launcher. El Flaco maintains he has been trained to perform special operations using shoulder-fired weapons, including the Javelin. He said he now trains others to use it as well. If El Flaco is telling the truth, Javelins would be among the most extreme examples of the escalation in the arms race between cartels and Mexican military. Cartels' arsenals now include belt-fed gatling guns, drone bombs and land mines. The U.S.-made Javelin is the most sophisticated shoulder-fired missile launcher in the world, with a range of a mile and a half. Its main purpose is to destroy military tanks, but it also has the capacity to take down low-flying helicopters. There are holes in the U.S. tracking system. During the Iraq War in 2003, the department lost track of 35 Javelins provided to Iraqi allied forces. ISIS was found to have a Javelin in Syria, Kurdish fighters there also obtained a Javelin and the weapon was found at a Libyan warlord base. Since 2018, the Mexican government has reported seizing a dozen rocket launchers and 56 grenade launchers from cartels. Thomas Brandon with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it was clear that "criminal organizations and drug cartels based in Mexico continue to look towards the United States as a source of supply for firearms and in this case military grade weapons such as grenades, machine guns, and Man-Portable Air Defense."

Note: American officials allowed thousands of illegal guns to be trafficked into Mexico during Operation Fast and Furious. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

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‘Encryption is deeply threatening to power': Meredith Whittaker of messaging app Signal

2024-06-18, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/18/encryption-is-deep...

Meredith Whittaker practises what she preaches. As the president of the Signal Foundation, she's a strident voice backing privacy for all. In 2018, she burst into public view as one of the organisers of the Google walkouts, mobilising 20,000 employees of the search giant in a twin protest over the company's support for state surveillance and failings over sexual misconduct. The Signal Foundation ... exists to "protect free expression and enable secure global communication through open source privacy technology". The criticisms of encrypted communications are as old as the technology: allowing anyone to speak without the state being able to tap into their conversations is a godsend for criminals, terrorists and paedophiles around the world. But, Whittaker argues, few of Signal's loudest critics seem to be consistent in what they care about. "If we really cared about helping children, why are the UK's schools crumbling? Why was social services funded at only 7% of the amount that was suggested to fully resource the agencies that are on the frontlines of stopping abuse? Signal either works for everyone or it works for no one. Every military in the world uses Signal, every politician I'm aware of uses Signal. Every CEO I know uses Signal because anyone who has anything truly confidential to communicate recognises that storing that on a Meta database or in the clear on some Google server is not good practice."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

The Pentagon is turning to a new class of weapons to fight the numerically superior [China's] People's Liberation Army: drones, lots and lots of drones. In August 2023, the Defense Department unveiled Replicator, its initiative to field thousands of "all-domain, attritable autonomous (ADA2) systems": Pentagon-speak for low-cost (and potentially AI-driven) machines – in the form of self-piloting ships, large robot aircraft, and swarms of smaller kamikaze drones – that they can use and lose en masse to overwhelm Chinese forces. For the last 25 years, uncrewed Predators and Reapers, piloted by military personnel on the ground, have been killing civilians across the planet. Experts worry that mass production of new low-cost, deadly drones will lead to even more civilian casualties. Advances in AI have increasingly raised the possibility of robot planes, in various nations' arsenals, selecting their own targets. During the first 20 years of the war on terror, the U.S. conducted more than 91,000 airstrikes ... and killed up to 48,308 civilians, according to a 2021 analysis. "The Pentagon has yet to come up with a reliable way to account for past civilian harm caused by U.S. military operations," [Columbia Law's Priyanka Motaparthy] said. "So the question becomes, ‘With the potential rapid increase in the use of drones, what safeguards potentially fall by the wayside? How can they possibly hope to reckon with future civilian harm when the scale becomes so much larger?'"

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.

Edward Snowden wrote on social media to his nearly 6 million followers, "Do not ever trust @OpenAI ... You have been warned," following the appointment of retired U.S. Army General Paul Nakasone to the board of the artificial intelligence technology company. Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) subcontractor, was charged with espionage by the Justice Department in 2013 after leaking thousands of top-secret records, exposing the agency's surveillance of private citizens' information. In a Friday morning post on X, formerly Twitter, Snowden reshared a post providing information on OpenAI's newest board member. Nakasone is a former NSA director, and the longest-serving leader of the U.S. Cyber Command and chief of the Central Security Service. In [a] statement, Nakasone said, "OpenAI's dedication to its mission aligns closely with my own values and experience in public service. I look forward to contributing to OpenAI's efforts to ensure artificial general intelligence is safe and beneficial to people around the world." Snowden wrote in an X post, "They've gone full mask-off: do not ever trust @OpenAI or its products (ChatGPT etc.) There is only one reason for appointing an @NSAGov Director to your board. This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth." Snowden's post has received widespread attention, with nearly 2 million views, 43,500 likes, 16,000 reposts and around 1,000 comments as of Friday afternoon.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

OpenAI on Thursday announced its newest board member: Paul M. Nakasone, a retired U.S. Army general and former director of the National Security Agency. Nakasone was the longest-serving leader of the U.S. Cyber Command and chief of the Central Security Service. The company said Nakasone will also join OpenAI's recently created Safety and Security Committee. The committee is spending 90 days evaluating the company's processes and safeguards before making recommendations to the board and, eventually, updating the public, OpenAI said. OpenAI is bolstering its board and its C-suite as its large language models gain importance across the tech sector and as competition rapidly emerges in the burgeoning generative artificial intelligence market. While the company has been in hyper-growth mode since late 2022, when it launched ChatGPT, OpenAI has also been riddled with controversy and high-level employee departures. The company said Sarah Friar, previously CEO of Nextdoor and finance chief at Square, is joining as chief financial officer. OpenAI also hired Kevin Weil, an ex-president at Planet Labs, as its new chief product officer. Weil was previously a senior vice president at Twitter and a vice president at Facebook and Instagram. Weil's product team will focus on "applying our research to products and services that benefit consumers, developers, and businesses," the company wrote.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

A court in the United States has found multinational fruit company Chiquita Brands International liable for financing a Colombian paramilitary group. The group, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), was designated by the US as a terrorist organisation at the time. Following a civil case brought by eight Colombian families whose relatives were killed by the AUC, Chiquita has been ordered to pay $38.3m (Ł30m) in damages to the families. The AUC engaged in widespread human rights abuses in Colombia, including murdering people it suspected of links with left-wing rebels. The victims ranged from trade unionists to banana workers. The case was brought by the families after Chiquita pleaded guilty in 2007 to making payments to the AUC. During the 2007 trial, it was revealed that Chiquita had made payments amounting to more than $1.7m to the AUC in the six years from 1997 to 2004. The banana giant said that it began making the payments after the leader of the AUC at the time, Carlos Castaño, implied that staff and property belonging to Chiquita's subsidiary in Colombia could be harmed if the money was not forthcoming. The AUC claimed to have been created to defend landowners from ... left-wing rebels, the paramilitary group more often acted as a death squad for drug traffickers. At its height, it had an estimated 30,000 members who engaged in intimidation, drug trafficking, extortion, forced displacement and killings.

Note: Read more about Chiquita's payments to this Colombian paramilitary group. Chiquita succeeded the United Fruit Company, which once owned most of the land in Guatemala and had close ties with the CIA. When Guatemala's democratically elected president aimed to nationalize land, US covert operations installed a military dictator, returning the land to United Fruit. This led to a bloody 40-year civil war and a series of repressive military regimes, armed with CIA-funded weapons.

Starting in 2016, United States government intelligence agencies, news media, and establishment leaders in both political parties warned of a vast Russian conspiracy to interfere in elections. Every major allegation proved to be wrong or profoundly misleading. According to every serious political scientist, Russia had no measurable influence in the 2016 elections. According to intelligence and security services, the news media, and establishment political leaders across the Western World, Russia is currently interfering in European elections by secretly bribing conservative politicians. Yesterday, the Washington Post repeated the claim. But neither the government agencies nor the news media have produced any evidence to support their accusations, and every single individual accused of taking money from the Russians has denied it. What we are witnessing appears to be establishment politicians weaponizing government intelligence agencies to interfere in Europe's elections, with the active participation of mainstream German NGOs and news media companies. The weaponization of government by politicians and intelligence agencies should terrify us all. Just because you're not the victim in this particular case, either because you're not European or conservative, is no reason to think that what's happening couldn't affect you and the people you love and care about in the future.

Note: Read about the 2016 leak of DNC documents that was blamed on Russian Hackers. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which is conducting an investigation into the origin of SARS-CoV-2, sent a letter to the National Institutes of Health today in which it suggests that there has been "a conspiracy at the highest levels of NIH and NIAID to avoid public transparency regarding the COVID-19 pandemic." Dr. David Morens, a longtime senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci ... engaged in efforts to evade the Freedom of information Act. In a September 2021 e-mail to a group of high-profile critics of the so-called lab leak theory, Morens wrote: "As you know, I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA'd constantly." In a November 2021 e-mail to Gerald Keusch, a former high-level NIH official, he asked that "NOTHING gets sent to me except to my gmail, and make sure that what gets sent to my gmail doesn't have a cc to another government employee who could be FOIA'd." Morens's e-mails also suggest that the problem of FOIA noncompliance at the NIH may not be limited to him. In one February 2021 e-mail, Morens wrote: "i learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia'd but before the search starts." In another April 2021 e-mail, Morens wrote: "PS, I forgot to say there is no worry about FOIAs. I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble."

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. Fauci was literally the highest paid federal employee within the US government, even higher than the president. Yet while he told the world that attacking him is attacking science, he lied about funding risky gain of function research on bat coronaviruses. In hearings earlier this year, he said "I don't recall" over 100 times when asked important information on his role in COVID and pandemic policies. What does this say about our public health leaders?

The violent crackdown carried out on Columbia University students protesting Israel's genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip was led by a member of the school's own faculty, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has declared. During a May 1 press conference, just hours after the New York Police Department arrested nearly 300 people on university grounds, Adams praised adjunct Columbia professor Rebecca Weiner, who moonlights as the head of the NYPD counter-terrorism bureau, for giving police the green light to clear out anti-genocide students by force. Weiner maintained an office at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Her SIPA bio describes her as an "Adjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs" who simultaneously serves as the "civilian executive in charge of the New York City Police Department's Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau." In that role ... Weiner "develops policy and strategic priorities for the Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau and publicly represents the NYPD in matters involving counterterrorism and intelligence." A 2011 AP investigation revealed that a so-called "Demographics Unit" operated secretly within the NYPD's Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureau. This shadowy outfit spied on Muslims around the New York City area. The unit was developed in tandem with the CIA. As a former police official told the AP, the unit attempted to "map the city's human terrain" through a program "modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.

In the 1979 murder trial of Dan White, his legal team seemed to attempt to blame his heinous actions on junk-food consumption. The press dubbed the tactic, the "Twinkie defense." Various studies have demonstrated that consuming nutritious, whole foods rather than processed, high-fat, high-sugar foods improves mental health, mood, and academic outcomes. All heavily factor into one's likelihood of committing crime. In the 1980s. Under the direction of a nutritionist, food staff secretly altered the diet at a juvenile detention facility in Virginia to reduce the amount of refined sugar fed to inmates. Social scientist and criminologist Dr. Stephen J. Schoenthaler oversaw the trial. He found that prisoners on the better diet had a 45% lower incidence of documented disciplinary actions. This preliminary success led to a dozen trials at other correctional facilities. "In the twelve correctional institutions that we studied, through 1985, we found that there was a 47% reduction in documented offenses, infractions, and other indicators of antisocial behavior," Schoenthaler said. Is it possible that investing in better prison nutrition would save money overall? Schoenthaler thinks so. "A single preventable infraction that leads to four months of additional jail or prison time might cost us $10,000 or more. If you look at this through the larger lens of prevention and treatment along the entire criminal justice continuum, then the financial savings would be incalculable," he said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.

On an October morning, a small army arrived to evict Rudy Ortega from his home in the Crash Zone, an encampment located near the end of the airport runway in San Jose, California. The camp, one of the largest in California, was cleared between 2021 and 2023 in part by a private company named Tucker Construction. Public spending on private sweep contractors is soaring across California. In total, private firms have been paid at least $100m to clear homeless camps, an investigation by the Guardian and Type Investigations has found. Pete White, the founder of the Los Angeles Community Action Network ... says he's observed a steady increase in the privatization of sweeps in recent years. "The growth of a private industry geared towards removing and dismantling informal settlements and houseless encampments has grown steadily in Los Angeles and across the country," said White. "Not only are we seeing a growth in the loss of property, but also the loss of rights." Firms vying for contracts to sweep encampments in California include mid-size construction companies that also do home renovations, as well as large environmental services firms that specialize in cleaning up hazardous waste and responding to public emergencies. A study of the health impacts of sweeps where the Crash Zone is located found that unhoused residents often lost medicines and other "health necessities" and that sweeps "drove unhoused people into hazardous, isolated, less visible spaces". As well as the loss of their homes, they allege the destruction of belongings that rules are meant to protect.

Note: Read more about the unprecedented rise in food costs that are leaving millions of Americans facing higher prices and growing food insecurity. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.

For 55 years, every presidential administration has granted early protection to major candidates who requested it. The Biden administration is the sole outlier. The Kennedy campaign made its fifth formal request for Secret Service protection in March, citing a 67-page report of repeated death threats, nutjob letters, two heavily armed intruders to a campaign event, an invader in Kennedy's Cape Cod house, and another man who invaded Kennedy's home twice in one day when Kennedy and his wife, Cheryl Hines, were at home. President Biden's decision to deny Secret Service protection to Kennedy seems to be based on political considerations and weaponizes the Secret Service by making it necessary for Kennedy to raise and spend millions of dollars each month for security. Kennedy appears to fit neatly into the law governing Secret Service protection for presidential candidates. Security costs the campaign 30 cents out of each dollar raised. Secret Service records recently revealed the agency's conclusions that Kennedy is at "elevated risk for adverse attention," and after reviewing credible armed threats against Kennedy, the agency assembled a group of eight teams ready to step in quickly after they get the go-ahead. But they never got it. RFK Jr. has provoked and challenged some of the most powerful forces in our country, especially concerning the military-industrial complex, the CIA, and endless foreign wars that so enrich defense contractors. The perils to Kennedy arise not only because of his name but also because of the mainstream media's relentless demonization of him.

Note: Nikki Haley asked for Secret Service protection earlier this month, and the Secret Service agreed even though she is no longer in the race. Read more about the JFK assassination. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

The U.S. Navy is reportedly preparing to test a hypersonic weapon as part of a joint developmental program with the U.S. Army, which aims to unleash the military's Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) capabilities. The forthcoming test will involve the C-HGB, which relies on the Navy's booster rocket motor to propel the weapon to hypersonic speeds. Once the rocket is ejected, the C-HGB can glide at speeds of Mach 5 or greater.Production of the C-HGB for the Army and the Navy has been underway for several years in cooperation with Dynetics ... who was contracted to develop the prototypes. Dynetics' development of the C-HGB prototypes marks the first time that a domestic private sector entity has been tasked with building hypersonic weapons. Known as Dark Eagle, the Army says its LRHW will be capable of reaching targets within a range of 1,725 miles and reportedly traveling at speeds exceeding 3,800 miles per hour. Presently, the U.S. is racing against similar hypersonic developments being undertaken by Russia and China, who have been actively testing similar weapons capabilities for years. Earlier this month, it was revealed that the U.S. Air Force conducted a test with a prototype hypersonic missile in the Marshall Islands. Formally known as the AGM-183, the missile is an air-launched rapid response weapon (ARRW), a type of hypersonic air-to-ground missile that was the result of a $480 million contract granted to Lockheed Martin in 2018.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Last month, I revealed internal Twitter and Department of Homeland Security emails showing that the agency had successfully pressured the social media platform to censor the New York Times during the 2020 presidential election. It was impossible to get the Times to comment on my reporting that revealed that a government agency, enacted to protect national security, had muzzled one of its own. The paper remained silent. That was the case until last week when the Times finally mentioned the issue. In a lengthy article that falsely paints efforts to promote free speech as orchestrated entirely by Trump supporters, the Times buried an acknowledgment of our reporting some 52 paragraphs down. The backhanded way in which the Times finally noted that the government had suppressed the speech – in an article that essentially argues that free speech is a dangerous right-wing plot – reflects the institution's changing nature. Many in the public may view the paper as a beacon of the free press. After all, the most important Supreme Court case enshrining media rights was New York Times v. U.S., the 1971 case that made it clear that journalists have the right to publish even classified documents. There are sprawling constitutional issues at heart here that should go beyond left and right. This government or the next administration may use the DHS apparatus to control what is said about almost any political issue. DHS bureaucrats ... have planned to suppress "misinformation" about the Ukraine war, the origins of COVID-19, and topics as broad as "racial justice." That power can easily be exploited. Last month, I testified before Congress on the importance of free speech. I also filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court ... urging the justices to consider the lengthy evidence that the government has already overstepped its authority with respect to online censorship.

Note: This Substack was written by independent journalist Lee Fang. Read more about Department of Homeland Security's censorship efforts, including offensive operations to manipulate public opinion, discredit individuals, and infiltrate online groups. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on censorship and media manipulation from reliable sources.

The National Park Service is continuing to convert dozens of its sites across the country to cashless payments only, drawing complaints and, now, a lawsuit. Starting in June last year, visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado were told that they could not use cash to enter the park or use its campgrounds. The negative reactions were swift, with visitors raising privacy concerns and expressing confusion about why the American dollar would not be welcome in the U.S. parks system. Now these complaints are the subject of a lawsuit filed on March 6 in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, asserting that the service's policies violate federal law defining cash as "legal tender" and the visitors' "lawful right to pay in cash" at national sites, including those without bank accounts or cards or those who simply prefer to pay cash. In addition to the park service, its director, Charles F. Sams, III, and the Department of the Interior were named as defendants. One of the three plaintiffs, Toby Stover, a New York woman, drove to Hyde Park, N.Y., in January. She ... was not allowed to enter after trying to pay $10 in cash, the filing said. The plaintiffs' lawyer, Ray L. Flores, II, said in an emailed reply to questions that the legal action is being financially backed by the Children's Health Defense. Mr. Flores said in the email that cashless policies were "a key component – if not the linchpin – of the surveillance state."

Note: This article is also available here. A 2018 Guardian piece titled "The cashless society is a con and big finance is behind it" describes some of the basic problems with the push to go cashless.

On Friday, March 8, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was convicted on three counts of drug trafficking and weapons conspiracy in a Manhattan federal court. Extradited to the United States shortly after completing his second presidential term in 2022, the 55-year-old Hernández is up against a mandatory minimum sentence of 40 years in jail. US Attorney General Merrick Garland accused Hernández of having run Honduras as a "narco-state where violent drug traffickers were allowed to operate with virtual impunity". Hernández was until very recently a good chum of successive US administrations, which appointed him a vital ally in the so-called "war on drugs" and flung money at Honduras accordingly. The messianically right-wing leader came to power five years after the 2009 US-facilitated coup d'Ă©tat against Manuel Zelaya. The fabricated pretext for the coup ... was that Zelaya was scheming to remain president of Honduras in violation of the constitutional one-term limit. Later this limit was quickly dispensed with in order to enable the continued reign of Hernández. Post-election protests triggered a characteristically lethal response from Honduran security forces, which didn't stop the US from continuing to fund those very same forces. The CIA's narco-operations have spanned the globe from Pakistan to Laos to Venezuela, while many an international narco-politician has – like Hernández – found at least fleeting favour with the US government.

Note: Read our Substack on the dark truth of the war on drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on intelligence agency corruption.

SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said. The network is being built by SpaceX's Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites. The plans show the extent of SpaceX's involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces. If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe. Reuters reporting discloses for the first time that the SpaceX contract is for a powerful new spy system with hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits. The planned Starshield network is separate from Starlink, SpaceX's growing commercial broadband constellation that has about 5,500 satellites in space. The classified constellation of spy satellites represents one of the U.S. government's most sought-after capabilities in space because it is designed to offer the most persistent, pervasive and rapid coverage of activities on Earth. "No one can hide," one of the sources said of the system's potential capability, when describing the network's reach.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

The Pentagon has known of fundamental flaws with U.S. military operations in the Horn of Africa for nearly 20 years but has nonetheless forged ahead, failing to address glaring problems, according to a 2007 study. The 50-page analysis, conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses, a private think tank that works solely for the U.S. government, is based on anonymized interviews with key U.S. government officials from across various departments and agencies. It found America's nascent war in the Horn of Africa was plagued by a failure to define the parameters of the conflict or its aims; an overemphasis on military measures without a clear definition of the optimal military strategy; and barriers to coordination between the military and other government agencies. In 2007, the year the ... U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, began operations, the U.S. conducted its first declared airstrike in Somalia. Since then, it has carried out more than 280 air attacks and commando raids, aimed primarily at the terrorist group al-Shabab, while the CIA and elite troops created local proxy forces to conduct low-profile operations on behalf of the United States. At the same time, the U.S. has provided Somalia with billions of dollars in counterterrorism assistance. The IDA study lamented the "presence of al-Qaeda" in the Horn of Africa and the "failed state of Somalia." Both remain realities despite two decades of forever war.

Note: Learn more about war failures and lies in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.